We're three days after Apple's introduction of the iPad mini and pricing is still a popular topic in the press, on blogs and in podcasts. Tim Cook & Peter Oppenheimer were questioned about it during the Apple earnings call last night. I wrote about it extensively two days ago.

One of the arguments for lower pricing came from Daring Fireball's John Gruber on Wednesday. I learn something every time I read John and I encourage you to read the post here. It really got me thinking. Something in his reasoning bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I finally got it last night. I often do my best thinking while I'm asleep.

Here's the pertinent information from the post:

And the iPad is hard to compare to any previous Apple product other than the iPod....iPad Mini’s $329 starting point leaves a price umbrella in tablets that Apple never left for MP3 player competitors....I’m just saying it wouldn’t have been unprecedented for Apple to focus more on price.

The trouble, I think, is with the last bit. John assumes Apple focused on price with iPod model creation. I have no way of knowing, but I'd wager iPod model pricing revealed itself as the job to be done was defined.

That is, product dictates price rather than price dictating product.

All iPods created during the expansion phase of the product (ignoring the iPod touch) had a very basic purpose. They enabled people to listen to their music on a small portable device. The devices differed fundamentally in two ways. Storage capacity and physical size. If you were backpacking through Europe for a month and wanted all your music, you chose what came to be the iPod classic. If you wanted the smallest possible device for your gym workout, the shuffle was your pick. The mini and then the nano occupied the middle ground.

There were significant price differences in these products because their job to do was very different. Apple still maintained a healthy profit margin on each device.

There's no correlation to Apple's tablet lineup as they've chosen to define it. Thus far, Apple views the difference between the iPad and iPad mini to be one of physical size only. You can see it in their marketing tagline; 'Every inch an iPad.'

The reason this makes sense is because there is no single, company defined purpose for an iPad. It's a different thing to every user. It can be a different thing from hour to hour. That makes it largely impossible for Apple to tailor it, beyond size, to the market. What has always made the iPad magical is that the device disappears and becomes the app you're using.

The original iPad defined the experience of using an Apple tablet. That experience is comprised of many things, including device quality, OS, and app environment. Anything Apple could have done to lower iPad mini pricing to approach that of the competition (which is admittedly making no profit on device sales) would have compromised the experience. This would have been far more damaging to Apple than leaving a price umbrella at the low end.

Apple has chosen wisely here. They've broadened the addressable market for the iPad and they've done it in a way that preserves the user experience and maintains their premium brand. If, someday, Apple can find a way to bring the iPad experience down market still further, I have no doubt they'll take it.